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See, I like the Internet. The Internet and I have gotten
along well for years now. But there are certain people on the Internet -- or,
shall we say, certain things -- that rub me the wrong way. And by "the
wrong way" I mean the "I would like to repeatedly whack somebody with
a chainsaw" kind of wrong way. Let's face it, the Internet brings out a
special kind of stupidity in a whole lot of people. Some of them are ordinary
people who, by the effects of some strange phenomenon, turn into illiterate slobs
whenever they log on. Some of them are just retarded all the time. The fact is,
they're here, they're idiots, and I have to get my beef with them off my chest
NOW, because beef is not a good thing to keep on your chest.
There are a lot of "things" in this category of "certain
things" people do on the Internet that tick me off, but I'll limit myself:
I'll only point out the ones I've seen on Xanga. After that, you guys can take
an inventory of everything I've mentioned that you're guilty of, to see what I
really think about your xanga. If only one or two apply to you, don't worry
about it. If more than that apply to you, you can continue not to worry about
it because frankly, who cares what I think about your xanga anyway? Doesn't
stop me from venting, though. So here goes, in no particular order.
Windows Media Player.
Actually, the order is mostly not particular. This
one, though, is my very least favorite of all. There is absolutely nothing
worse than clicking on some random user's name, only to NOT be taken to their
xanga immediately, and instead to see a small black box that says "Windows
Media Player" in the center of the screen. I CANNOT STAND THIS. No,
people, I don't want to see or hear whatever you've scraped off of cyberspace's
left shoe. Aside from the matter of it taking forever for the actual xanga to
load, I came to see what you write. I don't care if you're playing the
entire "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" movie plus deleted scenes
plus gag reel plus director commentary plus French subtitles, I don't want to
see it.
Ridiculously Tiny Font.
Another high contender on the list. This does not inspire quite the
murderous tendencies in me that unexpected appearances of Windows Media Player
do, but without a question, tiny font has a monopoly on sheer annoyingness. Is
this supposed to be stylish? It's not. It's just irritating. Nobody wants to
copy-and-paste your xanga update into a Microsoft Word document and blow it up
to size 20 just to read it without their eyeballs popping out. Here's a handy formula
for detemining whether your xanga text is too small. X is the size you selected
for your xanga update, right next to "Paragraph" and
"Font".
{[(X + 0 - 0) x 1]}/ 1 = Y
If Y comes out to be less than three, you lose.
People Who Say They Love "Music".
Be more specific, dammit.
Alternate Capitalization.
You know what I'm talking about. i'M tAlKiNg AbOuT tHiS. This phenomenon is
especially puzzling because I have no idea why anyone has the patience to do
it. The people who type in alternate caps clearly have the intelligence of a
Whopper Jr. no onions no pickles, and yet they go to all the trouble to hit
Caps Lock every other letter -- to serve what purpose, we can only speculate.
Is it, again, an issue of "coolness"? Is there some kind of social
superiority associated with typing with all the speed of a snail? Does it make
one "ghetto"? I can only hope the answer is no because if this is
supposed to be cool, my generation is even more screwed up than I thought. But
I just can't figure out any other explanation.
People Who Post Song
Lyrics All The Time.
I just don’t get it. Yes, I understand that music strikes a
certain chord with us all (pardon the pun) in a way that few other things do. I
understand that people admire the lyrics of the songs they like. What I don’t
understand is why some idiots see fit to make updates like:
“So close no matter how far
Couldn't be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
And nothing else matters
Never opened myself this way
Life is ours, we live it our way
All these words I don't just say
And nothing else matters
Trust I seek and I find in you
Every day for us something new
Open mind for a different view
And nothing else matters
Never cared for what they do
Never cared for what they know
But I know
So close no matter how far
Couldn't be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
And nothing else matters
Never cared for what they do
Never cared for what they know
But I know
Never opened myself this way
Life is ours, we live it our way
All these words I don't just say
Trust I seek and I find in you
Every day for us something new
Open mind for a different view
And nothing else matters
Never cared for what they say
Never cared for games they play
Never cared for what they do
Never cared for what they know
And I know
So close no matter how far
Couldn't be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
No nothing else matters
lol that song is so how i feel rite now”
Where’s the creativity? Where’s the originality? Are you
such a slave to pop culture that you can’t even express how you feel except by
posting the lyrics to some song written and performed by people whom you don’t
know and who don’t care at all about your existence? And how much do you expect
us to glean from these lyrics, anyway? I mean, I’m looking at the lyrics above
and there’s no way I’d have any idea
of what you’re feeling. Let us say that you are expressing angst. Then why
can’t you just say “I’m expressing angst” and be done with it? I hate
one-sentence entries on the whole, but they’re better than song lyrics as far
as I’m concerned.
Blogrings Whose Names Include Insane Amounts of Those Wierd Box Things.
It doesn't make your blogring stand out from the crowd. It makes it look
like a blogring for people who like boxes.
Additionally, Blogrings Whose Names And/Or Descriptions Consist Of A Single
Word Repeated Over And Over.
This is the
kind of thing I'm talking about. Of course, it gives me a great heaping pile of
glee to see that one of those blogrings only contains one member. And the name
and description are typed in alternate caps, too! You see how it all fits
together? There are no coincidences, not on this Internet of ours. Every
blogring fails miserably to attract a strong turnout for a reason.
Bad Xanga Color Schemes.
There are two kinds of bad color schemes on Xanga. Color schemes where the
text and the background are so similar that you have to scroll over the text to
read it (like, and I regret to say this, SharpieTattoo's new layout), and color
schemes where the different parts of the xanga are such loud and violently
clashing colors that the reader's eyeballs promptly explode (like the time that
hacker got into my account). Two very different ideas, but both of them equally
irritating.
People Who Post On
Your Xanga Just To Advertise For Their Own Xanga, Which Is Full Of Trashy
Layouts/Avatars/Whatever.
Nothing says “I don’t care about your xanga” better than
“Hey, I don’t know you so I’m not going to say anything related to your entry,
I just wanted to tell you that your xanga’s layout is frankly not very
interesting at all and personally, I feel strongly that it would really benefit
from one of my totally custom 100% original layouts! Check them out now!”
Xangas Wherein You
Can’t Tell Where Anything Is.
Want to be totally individual, nonconformist, and
anti-mainstream? Why not create a xanga with such intricate HTML wizardry that
it’s impossible to find any of the standard xanga hallmarks such as:
subscription list, profile, posting calendar, blogrings, entries, and text? Don’t
worry, I’m sure that not too many new
visitors will come to your xanga and, finding themselves completely unable to
locate any of the content, will click on the one button they can easily find:
the little red X at the top corner of the window. And even if they can navigate
properly, there’s always the chance that your HTML skills will fall short and
that lovely layout of yours will implode and explode at the same time,
resulting in such phenomena as two identical chatboxes (I swear that’s not a lie)
and random appearances of the phantom word “CLAF”. What is “CLAF”? I don’t know
either, but I personally suspect it stands for “Custom Layouts Are Fuckedup”.
And you can take that to the bank.
Entries That You Need
To Scroll Up-And-Down Or, Even Worse, Side-To-Side To View.
I don’t mean standard entries that just happen to be so
long, you need to use the scroll bar on the far right side of the window to
read them. I mean entries that come in their own little contained boxes within
the window, forcing you to scroll up and down on an artificial NEW scroll bar.
Or side-to-side. Especially side-to-side. I conducted a poll once, and it turns
out that a staggering 94.3% of all xangans feel compelled to e-mail viruses to
the addresses of those people accused of having side-to-side scroll bars on
their xangas. As for myself, I happen to prefer the more direct method of a
swift hook to the groin. After all, come on – most of these xangas are also run
by people who are guilty of the previous charge (I call them “Claffers”), so
who really cares if they suddenly find themselves unable to have kids for
eternity?
People Who Do Nothing
But Post Quiz And Survey Results All The Time.
There’s really not much need to elaborate on this particular
subject. Fact is, we don’t care about your favorite colors. We don’t care about
your favorite bands. We don’t care how you label yourself, or what kinds of
clothes you wear. If it takes a quiz result to tell us your personality, then
you haven’t been posting anything in your little xanga that deserves to be
called an update, because we should be able to figure out what kind of person
you are from what you write. And by God, we REALLY don’t want to hear about
which plastic pop-culture icon would “bang” you assuming you lived in a
parallel universe wherein plastic pop-culture icons saw fit to “bang” fat little
quiz-taking nerds.
(For the record, I shall happily “bang” anyone who asks. With
a lead pipe upon the cranium.)
AIM-Style
Abbreviations.
The only cool thing about these tired acronyms is spelling
out totally different things with them whenever you come across them on someone
else’s xanga. For instance:
“well he only 4 in not suppost 2 start till next year but
wtf”,
becomes
“well he only 4 in not suppost 2 start till next year but
wobbegongs tintinnabulate frigorifically”.
Xangas Wherein You Have
To Click On A Big Ol’ Box That Says “Enter” Just To See The Damn Thing Itself.
Thanks for the headsup, moron. I actually was already aware
that I was entering your xanga, but if you feel compelled to inform me that I
am doing so, you just go right ahead. Bear in mind, however, that I am only
liable to spend about five seconds looking at your idiotic musings before
ridding myself of your xanga forever, and with that “Enter” button, you just
shaved off one of them. Four seconds left to prove that you’re worth my time,
buddy.
Extra loathe-points if the xanga also has one of those
ultra-annoying popups that says “yO uR lEaViN mI xNaGa NoW hOp U hAd FuN”
whenever you try to exit the site, so that if you try to use the Back button on
your browser to skitter away from this revolting person’s xanga, you have to
deal with that popup twice – one for the regular page AND one for the “Enter”
part. Even though according to the URLs, they’re still the same page. That’s when sane people turn to their last
resort: eMachetes.
People Who Spell
“Grammar” “Grammer” Deserve To Be Shot.
Actually, I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone on
Xanga do that. I just needed to say it.
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